I am senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News. I write about energy and environment issues, frequently focusing on global warming. I have presented environmental analysis on CNN, CNN Headline News, CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and several national radio programs. My environmental analysis has been published in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. I studied atmospheric science and majored in government at Dartmouth College. I obtained my Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.

Don't Believe The Global Warmists, Major Hurricanes Are Less Frequent

When Hurricane Isaac made landfall in southern Louisiana last week, the storm provided a rare break in one of the longest periods of hurricane inactivity in U.S. history. Seeking to deflect attention away from this comforting trend, global warming alarmists attempted a high-profile head fake, making public statements that the decline in recent hurricane activity masked an increase in strong, damaging hurricanes.

“The hurricanes that really matter, that cause damage, are increasing,” John Abraham, a mechanical engineer on the staff of little-known University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, told Discovery News.

Normally, of course, the subjective global climate opinions of a mechanical engineer at an obscure Minnesota university wouldn’t be national news. However, global warming alarmists put Abraham forward as the point man for their self-proclaimed Climate Science Rapid Response Team. But hey, if Abraham is the best they can do, so be it.

Abraham says major hurricanes are the only ones that really matter, and that major hurricanes are increasing. If that is indeed so, then we might have a cause for concern. Let’s go straight to the data to find out if major hurricanes are indeed increasing.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) provides information on major U.S. hurricanes during the past 100-plus years.According to the NHC, 70 major hurricanes struck the United States in the 100 years between 1911 and 2010. That is an average of 7 major hurricane strikes per decade. What are the trends within this 100-year span? Let’s take a look.

Let’s split the 100-year hurricane record in half, starting with major hurricane strikes during the most recent 50 years.

During the most recent decade, 2001-2010, 7 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is exactly the 100-year average.

During the preceding decade, 1991-2000, 6 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is below the 100-year average.

During the decade 1981-1990, 4 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is substantially below the 100-year average, and ties the least number of major hurricanes on record.

During the decade 1971-1980, 4 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is substantially below the 100-year average, and ties 1981-1990 as the two decades with the least number of major hurricanes.

During the decade 1961-1970, 7 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is exactly the 100-year average.

Incredibly, not a single decade during the past 50 years saw an above-average number of major hurricanes – not a single decade!

Now let’s look at the preceding 50 years in the hurricane record, before the alleged human-induced global warming crisis.

During the decade 1951-1960, 9 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is above the 100-year average.

During the decade 1941-1950, 11 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is substantially above the 100-year average.

During the decade 1931-1940, 8 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is above the 100-year average.

During the decade 1921-1930, 6 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is slightly below the 100-year average.

During the decade 1911-1920, 8 major hurricanes struck the United States. That is above the 100-year average.

Global warming alarmists and mechanical engineers at obscure Minnesota universities may lie, but the objective data do not lie. During the past 5 decades, an average of 5.6 major hurricanes struck the United States. During the preceding 5 decades, and average of 8.4 major hurricanes struck the United States.

“The hurricanes that really matter, that cause damage” are not increasing. Hard, objective data show exactly the opposite. Indeed, during the past 4 decades, the time period during which global warming alarmists claim human-induced global warming accelerated rapidly and became incontrovertible, the fewest number of major hurricanes struck during any 40-year period since at least the 1800s.

Oh, and during the first two years of this current decade exactly zero major hurricanes struck the United States.

Global warming alarmists better hope we start seeing a rash of major hurricanes pretty soon if this is not going to be the quietest decade on record. Until and unless that happens, the objective data show the Climate Science Rapid Response Team is actually the Climate Science Rapid Propaganda Team.

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As usual, Mr. Taylor’s commentary is riddled with factual misstatements, flawed reasoning, and misrepresentations designed to mislead Forbes readers about climate science. One of the keys to Mr. Taylor’s sleight of hand is his conflation of so-called “major hurricanes” with only those hurricanes that make landfall in the United States. Mr. Taylor frequently uses this tactic, but as astute readers know, the impact of extreme weather events is not limited to the continental United States. Furthermore, climate change is not a process that produces identical climate shifts in every geographical region of the globe. Therefore, the heart of Mr. Taylor’s argument–the notion that the number of “major” hurricanes that make landfall in the United States is representative of the extent of global warming or the corresponding increasing impact of extreme weather events–is logically unsound.

Ever heard of a table? It might save spelling out your chosen data a sentence at a time.

OK, so influence of climate change on hurricanes is one of the areas least researched and most open to question, so I guess that’s why you harp on about it. Knutston et al (Nature Geoscience 3, 157 – 163 (2010)) model intensity increases of storms of only 2-11% by 2100, but point out that intensity is very closely correlated with sea surface temperature, and models are not designed to look at this. So we may see larger changes than the models predict. And in later updates they mention that some models do show a doubling of the most intense storms by 2100. We have alreay seen a 150% increase in storm events since 1980 according to insurance company Munich Re http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/global-warming-and-tornadoes/ Swiss Re says “Damage from wind, storm surge and inland flooding already amounts to 6% of GDP per year in some countries, according to the study’s preliminary results. Under a high climate change scenario, annual expected losses could rise by another 1 to 3% of GDP by 2030.”

Holland and Webster (Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society in London, 2007) suggested “Frequency of Atlantic hurricanes doubled over last century, climate change suspected”.

So the the article’s figures seem to come from NHC technical memorandum NHC-6 (table 6 more or less matches the figures for major hurricanes striking the mainland). The next table, 7, shows average numbers of Atlantic major hurricanes: from 1851-2010 as 1.9, from 1981-2010 as 2.7, and 1995-2010 as 3.8, which does seem significant. “2010 had the third-most number of tropical storms and the second-most number of hurricanes. The two-year period of 2004-2005 was the most active ever seen in the Atlantic basin, setting records for the largest number of tropical storms and hurricanes in a two-year period and tying the record (13) for the largest number of major hurricanes set in 1950-1951. It is also of note that 10 out of the last 16 years have experienced 14 or more tropical storms.” With 5 intense hurricanes 2010 had 217% of the 1950-2000 average.

Honestly, James Taylor, why do you bother making up this tedious drivel when nobody takes you seriously or thinks what you are saying is relevant to the big issues anyway? Oh… could it be that you’re paid to muddy the waters and take a partisan view? Could you please stop it? It’s just annoying.

One of Taylor’s more stupid posts. Since 1995 Atlantic hurricane seasons have been more active – The total number of tropical storms and hurricanes has been higher.* There have been 35 Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes recorded since recordkeeping began in 1851. 8 of those have occurred since 2001. There were 24 Category 4 storms between 1976-2000, There have been 19 since 2001. Clearly, the frequency of major hurricanes has been increasing in the past decade or so. Taylor is making the weasel argument that if they don’t come ashore in the US they don’t count.

*Although a warmer atmosphere would lead to more extreme weather, the jury isn’t in on whether it would lead to more hurricanes. It’s possible that a warmer atmosphere would lead to more shearing winds, which would stop hurricane formation. However, there is a strong relationship between sea surface temperatures and PDI (power dissipation index, a measure of frequency, intensity, and duration of storms.) http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes

Just about everyone on both sides of the debate are biased, and thus untrustworthy if not incompetent, in their presentation of statistics. You can find the data on all atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes since 1851 at

http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/

I have only the data from 1960 – 2010 on hand. The average strength per storm, over all atlantic tropical storms (with hurricane strength taken as 0) and hurricanes (strengths from 1 to 5), has varied little since a high of 1.41 for 1960-1970 (before the period of “global warming”, between 1975 and about 2000).

For 1960 – 1970, average strength 1.41; For 1970 – 1980, average strength 1.15; For 1980 – 1990, average strength 1.10; For 1990 – 2000, average strength 1.25; and For 2000 – 2010, average strength 1.22.

If you look at the full hurricane and tropical storm data from 1851, I expect you will find plenty of variation in the number of storms per year, number of major hurricanes per year, and number of major hurricanes striking the U.S.A. per year — but no trend towards stronger storms, nor towards more storms long-term.

The global warming scare is just that — and a mass delusion, that has yet to fade from an embarrassed public consciousness. And it is the fault of incompetent scientists, and of money-hungry and power-hungry politicians.

harrydhuffman – So, let me get this straight: You’re adding up the number of Cat 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 hurrianes and dividing by the total number of hurricanes to get your “average hurricane strength,” with no resort to ACE or PDI? So, if you had 3 storms one year, consisting of two Cat 1s and 1 Cat 5, you would have an “average strength” of 3.5. But, if you had 20 storms, consisting of 15 Cat 1s and 5 Cat 5s, you would have an average strength of 2. I don’t think that your quaint methodology tells us anything about the trend in storm intensity. As to storm frequency: It is well known that hurricane frequency seems to follow a long term cycle. But hurricane seasons have been more active than normal since 1995. It is too soon to tell for sure whether the more active hurricane seasons are influenced by global warming…yet.

In the Ostrich world inhabited by James Taylor, Prof. John Abraham* has become a favorite whipping boy because Abraham dared to call out Christopher Monckton over the pseudo-science poppycock that he spreads.

Per ususal, Taylor reveals how mean-spritied and arrogant he is in this slop-ed.

*PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota.

To learn more about the Abraham-Monckton engagmen, go to: http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/jpabraham/

How in the world does Forbes allow such blatant falsehood to be published. See the National Hurricane Center webpage for real data, or check the Canadian one. This article is a piece of sleazy crud that should not be allowed on a reputable site, unless they are heading the way of the Enquirer.

Look for yourself, stop believing these goofballs. I am not blowing hot air, Mr Taylor is, and I am not publishing falsehoods on a reputable site. If you do a little bit of questioning of the man’s assertions on the site I mentioned, go to the dot gov slash climo slash #ncy to see a graphical representation of all cyclones (hurricanes) by year and strength. Taylor is a liar who is allowed to publish non-vetted falsehoods on this site. He sights the same places I do, I just happened to look at them instead of making things up. BTW – I am a physicist too, if you are, you should always know to look for sources, and then question the sources. Taylor has sighted them, and either does not know what he is looking at (hope so) or is an outright deceiver (hope not) – either way his article is a lie and and the vetting of it was not done – shame on you Forbes.